In approving the crocodile-inhabited Fitzroy River as an Olympic venue, Brisbane's 2032 Games organisers have drawn a line between what is technically permissible and what is humanly comfortable — a distinction that has always shadowed the Olympic project. The river, already a working competition site in Rockhampton, passed independent scrutiny for fairness and physical suitability, even as the question of 500 saltwater crocodiles was quietly set aside as a matter of protocol rather than principle. What emerges is an older tension in sport: whether the conditions of competition can ever be tru